Published March 6, 2005 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
In the armed forces, drill sergeants break the will of unruly soldiers with a long, grueling march. In northern Minnesota, weather breaks the will of winter-weary residents with a long, grueling March.
As a month, March provides little seasonal joy. It’s the gateway between winter and spring, only here on the Iron Range we know that it’s just a tease. We expect more snow and cold into April, maybe even May. March provides us just enough hope to crush.
I know, I know. Some people were born in March (for instance, the artist Michelangelo), get married in March (usually only if the baby’s due in August) and have fun things happen in March (This is prime time if you want a New Year’s baby). JFK founded the Peace Corps in March 1961. That’s nice.
But for every nice thing about March, like the Peace Corps, there’s some other grim specter of gloom: The Boston Massacre (March 1770); The Dred Scott decision (March 1857), the North Vietnamese Ho-Chi Minh Campaign (March 1975). Winston Churchill set the tone for the 50-year Cold War with his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in March 1946. We started the Iraq War in March 2003. Also, all the snow looks like barf, your car frosts over every night and people will start putting trucks through the ice any day now.
March is not my favorite month.
Obviously, March has been a rough month throughout world history, but in other parts of the country, heck, even the state, March isn’t so bad. March includes, technically speaking, the first day of spring and in many areas, that’s actually true.
In fact, what makes March on the Iron Range so bad is the feeling that it’s not quite as bad elsewhere. If you read the Sunday comics, you see lots of “springtime” comic strips in March. That’s where the big-time cartoonists who should have retired years ago run the happy spring story lines they drew last year. They clearly don’t live here. And Garfield isn’t funny anymore. Sorry, that’s unrelated.
I tried to be objective about March. I made a list of pros and cons, but this is all I got:
Positive March attributes: Sometimes you get Easter candy; green beer is supposed to be green.
Negative March attributes: Soul-sucking malaise consumes your being; hibernating creatures awaken before crawling into your home heating system to die; thawing highways make morning commute less like floating sensation and more like tank incursion into Falluja.
It’s only a month, a spot on the calendar. Things will get better. Tell me these things if you must, but you know deep in your heart you’d rather it was April, or May, or better yet, June.
When I was a kid, I would always take out the bike in March because I thought it was warm enough. One year, I pedaled down our country highway after school to the local gas station to buy a jumbo Coke and candy. Carrying these things on my handlebars on the way home, I hit a patch of melting snow and smashed the whole works – the Coke, the candy, my face – into the pavement. I lived, but not happily. I think of this when I see those tempting bare patches of pavement on the streets of Hibbing.
This is the time of year when I feel the strongest desire to abandon my native land for a warmer climate, one with four equally long seasons. You know, like balmy Ohio or tropical Iowa. I usually hold off on these urges long enough to feel the warm sun of the real Iron Range spring (late May), but I worry that one year I’ll do something rash, like flee to Cincinnati.
I guess this is the price we pay to live in northern Minnesota. Our summers are nice, and our Christmases are snowy. Still, some days in March, I’d trade it all for 50 degrees and a few rays of sun.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.